Seventeen Years of Adult Acne: The Story I Never Told and What It Actually Took

By Christine, Founder of SANA Skin Clinic, Berwick

Last weekend, SANA won Gold at the Best in Skin Awards in the team category.

The before and after images we submitted captured the last twelve months of my skin journey - just a snippet of what it took to get there.

I almost didn't enter.

And when SANA's name was called, I walked up on that stage in front of our entire industry and told part of this story out loud for the very first time. It was terrifying.

But those images only tell part of the story and the before image was by far not the worst my skin ever was.

The full story is over seventeen long, and I have never told it in full.

Until now.

I have spent seventeen years trying to fix my acne.

Seventeen and a half years of hoping the next thing would be the thing, of spending money I didn't always have, following advice I wasn't always sure about, and sitting in treatment rooms not unlike the ones I now work in, waiting for someone to finally connect the dots.

I'm sharing this now because this story is also the story of why SANA exists - and because if you have adult acne and feel like you have truly tried everything, I want you to know that I understand that feeling more personally than most.

Before it all started

As a teenager, my skin was mostly fine.

The occasional breakout, nothing that lived in the back of my mind, nothing that ever really concerned me. I tell you that because it matters: this was not something I was familiar with and Adult acne hit me out of nowhere, right in the middle of what should have been one of the happiest seasons of my life, and it arrived to stay.

It started with pregnancy - seventeen and a half years ago

It was toward the end of my first pregnancy, and at the time I thought it was just what happens - your body is doing something extraordinary, of course your skin shifts with it.

But months passed, breastfeeding continued, and when I eventually tried going back on contraception to settle the hormonal acne, my body couldn't tolerate it anymore. The side effects were too much.

So I started doing what any person does when the obvious answers stop working: I started searching. Different skincare, different advice, different hopes, each one arriving with that particular kind of quiet desperation that you learn to hide from the people around you.

Then my second pregnancy arrived, and I made a decision I stand by completely - I put my skin on hold. Pregnancy and motherhood came first, and I was more than willing to wait.

What I didn't fully understand yet was just how much of my life that acne was going to quietly take from me before this was over.

When adult acne takes over more than just your skin

Here is what nobody really talks about honestly:

adult acne does not just affect your skin long after you ever expected to deal with breakouts. It moves in and takes up space everywhere - in your relationships, your confidence, the way you move through a room, the way you say yes or no to things.

My kids were little, we had a full and beautiful family life. And yet, things like.. getting ready for events - family gatherings, celebrations, anything involving being photographed or seen - I would dread for days beforehand.

Not in a background kind of way. In a standing-at-the-mirror-in-tears-before-I'd-even-walked-out-the-door kind of way. The anticipation was often worse than the event itself, those days of knowing it was coming, already mentally calculating how to manage it.

And yes, I know how that sounds.

I know a voice somewhere says "it's just skin."

But if you have lived this, you know it is not just skin. It is every single moment you could not be fully present in because part of your brain was somewhere else entirely.

My husband was supportive throughout all of this, genuinely and consistently, which in some ways made the shame harder to understand in myself - because the judgment I was so afraid of wasn't coming from him.

It was entirely internal.

He saw me clearly and was still there, and I still couldn't shake it.

That is the thing about acne that affects you this deeply: it doesn't respond to reassurance. It lives somewhere logic can't reach.

Makeup became armour, not a choice.

Without it I felt genuinely exposed.

And even with it on, I was never fully safe.

If you have not lived with skin you are trying to cover, you may not understand this particular thing, but the wrong angle of light can undo everything in a second - suddenly the texture shows through the foundation, the bumps casting their own small shadows, and what you carefully covered is visible to whoever is standing in front of you.

Every single conversation became two things happening at once:

whatever was actually being said, and a continuous background calculation about where the light was coming from, which way to angle my face, whether to step slightly to the left.

It was exhausting, and it was never, ever absent.

It turned ordinary moments - school pickup, meeting people, coffee with a friend, a work interaction - into something to manage rather than something to simply be in. And being fully present with my young family, in those years that go so fast, was all I wanted.

The treatments that didn't work - and the ones that made things worse

Once I stopped breastfeeding the second time, I went to a local skin clinic where a doctor put me on all sorts of topical creams and prescription retinoids that made my skin reactive and sensitive, then booked me in for, peels, Fraxel laser..

- aggressive, expensive, and for a few glorious weeks, effective.

My skin looked beautiful (for a few weeks), and I remember that feeling so clearly, the sheer relief of it. Then the acne came back, worse than before.

That's when the antibiotic journey started.

Four years, on and off, increasing doses, switching types as I became resistant to one after another.

And here is what no one explained to me at the time & what I now know with complete certainty as a skin therapist: long-term antibiotic use for acne doesn't just target bacteria. It dismantles your gut microbiome, disrupts your hormones, and creates a cascade of consequences that can take years to untangle - consequences that were never mentioned to me, never monitored, never supported.

By the end of those four years, I was unrecognisable to myself.

From someone genuinely active, fit, training regularly, full of energy, to someone who could barely get through a day. Constant fatigue, body aches, brain fog and the permanent sensation of having the flu.

Doctor after doctor dismissed it as psychological and suggested antidepressants, and I said no - because I knew with complete clarity that this was not depression. My mind was strong and so motivated. It was my body that was shutting down, and I wasn't willing to accept a label that felt entirely wrong just because no one could find the actual answer yet.

Eventually I was referred to a chronic fatigue specialist, and he presented a different case:

antidepressants used off-label, at doses far higher than you'd ever prescribe for depression, as a clinical tool specifically for chronic fatigue. It wasn't framed as treating my mind. It was framed as treating a condition, and I trusted that distinction.

What followed were months of doses that kept climbing because the results he had promised weren't coming, and rather than questioning whether the approach itself was wrong, he just kept pushing further.

By the end I was on eight or nine tablets a day (4 times the depression dose).

I felt like a zombie.

My memory was quietly dissolving in ways I didn't always notice until something made it impossible to ignore.

I will never forget..

One morning my husband had dropped our eldest at kindergarten and needed to get his car serviced - I was going to meet him there with the baby and drive him home. I pulled into the Mitsubishi dealership and sat there waiting, and waiting, telling myself he must be running a few minutes behind.

After almost an hour sitting in that car park, it finally clicked for me:

he hadn't driven a Mitsubishi for two years. He was at Mercedes. My memory was simply wiped. I drove straight home and completely fell apart, because I knew something was deeply, seriously wrong.

When I went back to the specialist and described what had happened, I could see it register on his face - not quite panic, but something close to it, a flicker of real concern that hadn't been there in any of our previous appointments.

He took me off the antidepressants cold turkey that same day, and I never saw him again.

I eventually found an integrative doctor who, at our very first appointment, actually sat with me, asked questions that no one had thought to ask before, and sent me off with a range of tests that seemed unusual at the time but turned out to be exactly right.

What those tests found was something years of conventional medicine had entirely missed: the prolonged antibiotic use had also wiped out the healthy bacteria in my nasal passages, and staph bacteria had taken over. My body had been slowly poisoning itself for months or even years.

That was the chronic fatigue.

That was what four years of antibiotics, prescribed for acne without support or monitoring or any real consideration of what they were doing to the rest of me, had caused. It took almost a year to recover properly, and when I finally came out the other side, my acne was still there.

What makes this even harder to comprehend now is that nobody ever stopped to ask why my skin was doing this in the first place.

It was actually my own research and persistence that led me to push for testing - the doctors weren't looking.

That testing eventually confirmed what is now called PMOS, or Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome - previously known as PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome), and only recently renamed to better reflect what it actually is:

a complex, multisystem hormonal condition that affects skin, metabolism, weight, mood and reproductive health.

Later, almost incidentally while investigating something else entirely, endometriosis was found as well.

My hormones had been a fundamental part of the picture the whole time. Nobody had looked deeper. I had trusted the process, I didn't yet know enough to push back harder, and so for four years we treated a symptom while the actual cause went completely unexamined.

Why I built SANA - and how it became what it is today

I want to be clear about something, because I think it matters for anyone reading this who is in the thick of their own search right now:

when my acne started seventeen and a half years ago, I was not a skin therapist.

I had no professional knowledge, no industry access, no advantage.

I was just a young mum with two small children, a face full of acne, and no roadmap.

Exactly where so many of our clients are when they first find us.

SANA didn't exist yet. The integrative approach didn't exist yet. I was doing what anyone does - Googling at midnight, trying products from anywhere, booking appointments with whoever came recommended, hoping the next thing would finally be the thing.

It was about two to three years into my skin journey, still deep in the antibiotic years and the search for answers, that I started the business.

And the first two years of SANA were beauty, not skin.

I was learning about skin therapy at the same time, building my skills and saving to invest in the direction I could already see I needed to go.

The conviction was there from the start - that skin needed to be treated differently, more deeply, more completely - but it took time to build toward it properly. We eventually stepped away from the traditional topical industry approach of stripping the skin and felt fully aligned in the principles of corneotherapy - which is all about barrier protection and feeding the skin with what its lacking.

For the past eight years, SANA has been predominantly a skin clinic, with beauty as a small complement to that work. That transition didn't happen because of a business strategy. It happened because of everything I had lived through, and everything I was determined to offer people that I hadn't been able to find for myself.

I did not build an integrative skin clinic because it was a clever business model. I built it because I had lived the alternative, and the alternative had nearly broken me.

Growing up in Germany, antibiotics were treated with genuine caution.

I remember being a child and hearing that a school friend had been prescribed them, and there was a collective seriousness around it - that must mean she is really unwell, that must be a last resort.

You did not reach for antibiotics because something wasn't resolving on its own.

Coming to Australia and experiencing the opposite - medicated solutions offered quickly, without explanation, without preparation for the consequences, without any real follow-up - was a shock.

And then living those consequences in my own body made it something I simply could not build a career without addressing.

There has to be another way. That belief is the entire foundation of SANA,

and it is not abstract for me - it is personal in a way that shapes every single decision we make.

I am not anti-medication, and I never have been.

There is absolutely a time and a place for medical intervention.

But medication cannot be the first call.

It cannot be offered without context, without investigation, without exploring other avenues, without support, without eductaion offered, without a plan that holds the whole person - their history, their gut health, their hormones, their nervous system, their life - properly in mind.

That is what SANA Skin Clinic was built to be: the integrative skin health clinic that connects the dots no single modality can connect alone.

The part I have never really said out loud

For years, I was treating clients for adult acne - the very thing I couldn't resolve in myself. Even with the countless amazing result we achieved, with every new client - there was a voice in the back of my head:

why would they trust you when you can't fix yourself?

It wasn't rational, I knew that, but it was relentless.

It showed up hardest in front of new cleints, new team members and industry peers - which is exactly why I hesitated for so long before sharing any of this publicly.

Imposter syndrome followed me everywhere!

My skin improved and fell back and improved again over the years.

It was never a straight line.

About twelve years ago, somewhere in the middle of all of it, I sought out a naturopath outside the clinic hoping she might be the missing piece.

She put me on a strict elimination diet - no gluten, no dairy, no sugar - and while I saw some small improvement, it was minimal, and honestly? I was miserable.

The restrictions were significant, the approach wasn't built on any real testing of my individual markers, and without that data behind it, it simply couldn't hold.

I now understand exactly why. But at the time it just felt like yet another thing that almost worked and then didn't.

That experience shaped something important in how SANA eventually built its naturopathic approach.

When we brought on our first in-clinic naturopath five years ago - now two - everything was data backed, testing-led, specific, and integrated with everything else we were doing.

And then life did what life does.

It stretches you in ways you don't always see coming, and no matter how much you know, no matter how hard you are trying, the resilience of a human being has limits. Stress is not always something you can logic your way out of or treat your way around. Sometimes it simply accumulates, and your body keeps the score whether you want it to or not.

So, three years ago we took it even further and brought in our incredible nervous system practitioner Aesha, because I had discovered firsthand how cortisol cascades into hormones, into gut function, into skin - how you can do everything right on the surface and still be completely undone by what chronic stress is doing underneath.

Every single layer of the SANA approach exists because I needed it myself first.

And still, through all of it, the acne persisted.

And so did the voice.

Becoming a client in my own clinic - about a year ago

About a year ago, I finally did something I had been quietly resisting for longer than I should admit.

I sat down with my team - not as their employer, not as the person who was supposed to have all the answers - and said:

let's start from the beginning. Strip it all back, run more tests, come at this with completely fresh eyes. I wanted to be treated and being help accountable just like every other client.

What followed were multiple team meetings, new investigations, genuinely honest conversations, a plan and after a few months, eventually a plan B - a referral to a dermatologist willing to work alongside our integrative philosophy rather than ignore it.

The recommendation, after all of that, was Roaccutane.

I want to be honest about what that decision stirred up in me personally.

I had spent years recommending medical intervention when needed to clients without hesitation or judgment, because I genuinely believed in it when it was the time, the right tool, used correctly, with proper support.

But for myself, with my history, the trauma I had from previous experiences, the full weight of what careless medication had done to me - I had become quietly stubborn.

Going back to a medicated path felt, in some private part of me, like failure.

My team brought it to me gently and reminded of how we support clients who do need a short term medical integration.

Yet, I needed real time before I could say yes.

When I finally agreed, it was not reluctant surrender - it was a fully informed decision built around everything that had come before.

My initial instinct had been to stay om a low dose, but the acne wasn't only on my face; it was on my back, my arms, and my chest as well

(and yes, for years, getting dressed was its own version of the same hide game I was playing with makeup),

a low dose likely wouldn't have been enough to properly clear and maintain that. We needed to do this fully.

The naturopaths built an internal support plan to protect my liver, my gut, and everything else Roaccutane places under strain.

The topical treatment protocol was designed around the barrier sensitivity the medication creates, focused on nourishing and protecting rather than treating aggressively.

When I told the dermatologist I would not go back on antibiotics as a lead-in - his initial suggestion - he listened, and we found a different path together.

The side effects have been minimal in a way I genuinely attribute to how thoroughly we prepared. Some joint aches in the transition period, which the naturopath team managed. Dry lips, which are still with me. But my skin does not feel dry, depleted, or sensitive. My mind is strong. My acne is the most resolved it has been in seventeen years.

Where I am right now - and what comes next

Again, let's be honest: this journey is not finished.

I am still completing my Roaccutane course. After that comes the careful transition off the medication (so many people rebound without a plan) - with full team support — and then fully rebuilding and strengthening my skin barrier. From there, the next focus begins: post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, acne scarring, the marks that seventeen years leave behind even after the breakouts have cleared.

That work is layered and it takes time, and I am not going to dress it up as anything other than what it is.

And then - because I am forty-two and frankly I have been waiting a long time for this - the chapter I am most looking forward to: actually getting to focus on my skin ageing well. Strengthening, brightening, the things that are just for me rather than in response to a crisis.

After years of survival mode, I cannot wait. I have earned that chapter.

There is no neat bow on this yet.

But for the first time in seventeen years I am not desperately searching for the next thing. I have a plan, a team I trust completely, and I know exactly where we are going.

What winning this award actually means

When I decided to enter my own skin journey into the Best in Skin awards in the team category, I nearly talked myself out of it more times than I can count.

The judges are skin therapists and industry experts who know exactly what they are looking at. If we were finalists, if we won, my skins photos and my story would be in front of a room full of peers and all over social media.

The thing I had spent seventeen years carefully managing and hiding would just be out there.

I was genuinely terrified, and I almost didn't submit it.

But I also knew that the story of SANA cannot be told honestly without my story inside it. Everything this team has built, every layer of the integrative approach, every practitioner we have brought in - it all traces back to seventeen years of searching for something better and eventually building it myself.

We became finalists.

Then SANA's name was called and we won.

Most of my team were in that room when it happened, and they celebrated as I walked up on that stage and told part of this story out loud in front of our industry for the very first time.

Afterwards, the team sent me messages I will not forget - telling me they were proud of my courage.

That word, from the people who sat in those planning meetings with me, who gave me the stern side-eye every time I considered straying from the plan, who told me to go easy on myself, who helped me heal, who looked after me so thoroughly I barely felt the side effects of a medication known for them - that meant more than any trophy.

This was a team award, and that is exactly right.

It was never about me. It was about what this team is capable of when they work together around one person with a complicated, layered, long-standing problem. My acne journey was the proof of concept.

The team was the point.

And it took me seventeen years, an extraordinary group of people, and a day at the Best in Skin Awards to finally be able to say that out loud.

If any of this sounds familiar

If you are reading this and recognising yourself somewhere in it

- the endless trying, the brief improvements that never hold, the dread before events that should just be joyful, the exhaustion of being handed solutions that never quite address what is actually going on underneath..

I want you to know that you are not difficult, you are not beyond help, and you have not run out of options. You have just not yet had someone sit with you and actually connect the dots.

Whether you are dealing with hormonal acne, persistent adult acne, acne scarring, post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, or simply that feeling that everyone else seems to have the answer except you - a SANA Skin Analysis is where we start.

Let's look at the full picture and put it into context: your history, your health, your hormones, your gut, your stress, your skin,.

Then we build a plan around you, not a protocol.

No quick fixes. No product push. No guessing.

There is another way. I promise you there is.

Book your Skin Analysis now

SANA Skin Clinic, Berwick Melbourne.

SKIN IN CONTEXT